Ebb Tide
by Mariel Nightstalker
Summary: I accidentally uploaded this into my backup account last night. Summary: 30 years after the Second War, two lonely people are given a second chance at happiness. SLASH Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter


**Ebb Tide**

_First the tide rushes in  
Plants a kiss on the shore  
Then goes out to sea  
And the sea is very still once more_

So I rush to your side  
Like the oncoming tide  
With one burning thought:  
Will your arms open wide?  
At last, we're face to face  
And as we kiss through an embrace  
I can tell, I can feel you are loved  
You are really, really mine  
In the rain, in the dark, in the sun

Like the tide at its ebb  
I'm at peace in the web  
Of your heart's arms  
Of your arms

-Bonnie Prince Billy, "Ebb Tide"

Winter came. As the air dried the skin around Harry's fingertips hardened and split. It was noon, one of those unsettling winter days that are brighter than they ought to be. Abrasive sunlight poured in knife-like shafts through the too-clean window panes. He waited, drinking a glass of ice water, an island of loneliness amid a sea of good cheer. It was the first Christmas Eve not spent working in years.

The restaurant was an old building, one that might once have held banquets and served people dressed in silk gowns and wool suits in fashionable colors. Chinese carpets covered the floor. It was split into two levels, but the upper floor was cordoned off. The staff said the floorboards above were too old to hold much weight.

The broad staircase made a great bend, and in the angle was a high window, looking westward, with a deep bench, covered with a row of flowering plants in curious old pots of blue China-ware. The yellow afternoon light came in through the house plants and seasonal poinsettia flowers. It flickered a little on the white wainscots and the clean swept floors. The restaurant didn't have many customers. Someone with too much time on their hands had hand-strung popcorn and dried berries into garlands. These garlands wrapped around the tasseled cords restraining the heavy drapes, guarding each window against feelings of anti-cheer.

Their powers did not work on wizards, apparently. After the long walk in the snow Harry was cold, lonely, and tired.

Things had not gone well after the War but sadly, in retrospect, those were the good days in comparison. Ginny wasn't sick yet, and he was still working as an Auror. They could afford a modest cottage, and eventually his income was big enough to support a tidy family of five.

Tragedy started with Albus, his youngest. One day their son had been normal in every way; he had eaten his meals in the normal way, had normal conversations with his mother, gone to bed when he was supposed to, had no trouble falling asleep. And the next morning he had sunk into a world of deep silence. And so they waited, but Albus never again rose to the surface of his deep ocean of silence.

He still didn't know what'd happened for sure, but he suspected the remnant of Voldemort's followers. When his daughter was kidnapped and sexually violated, his suspicions deepened. They never caught the men, and he honestly wasn't surprised when Lily developed anorexia after puberty. She was probably terrified of inspiring desire, and battled fiercely the development of her young body. Harry understood his daughter's fears, and did everything he could to show her that she was loved and safe.

Ginny just couldn't understand, though. Of course, they put her in therapy, but nothing seemed to work. His only daughter died of a heart attack when she was only fifteen. Less than a year later, his eldest, James, committed suicide. While going through his effects Harry discovered that someone had been blackmailing him with his closeted homosexuality. He wept. He wasn't a homophobe and never tolerated hard words against others in his home: why did his son feel like he had to hide who he was from his family, from his father?

And, then, finally, Ginny got sick. He had to quit his job to take care of her. All their savings went into treatments, and then when those were exhausted he started taking out loans. He knew she was dying. There was nothing for it. The imminence of her leaving made him grind his teeth and press his feet hard against the ground.

The papers were calling it the War Sickness. Harry remembered all too well the smoke and ash following the three-month blitz, and the way nothing grew or sang or scuttled in Diagon Alley. He should have suspected something when every year the snows seemed to fall a little thicker and linger longer. Still, when the sickness began killing those who'd narrowly survived the fight, he was angry. Why should they, the survivors, die like the evil-doers? They had fought and killed and seen their friends die. They were tough. Nothing surprised them, except, perhaps, for the dogged resilience of the human spirit.

But the human spirit can be defeated too.

Albus was all he had left. He was deeply in debt and worked days and nights to make ends meet. There was no shortage of work – hard, menial, tiring work that had to be done even as the pinnacles of magical culture crumbled with no one to maintain them. Even when Rome is burning, someone has to shovel the shit.

Harry liked to think that he was doing the best he could as a father and as a person, but Albus' silence was a blank wall.

Today, however, he was not working. He'd injured himself lifting a basket of dragon eggs without charming it lighter first and was forced to take a break. His back stung and crawled with salve, reminding him constantly that, hard-earned laborer muscles aside, he was not the young boy he once was. He was forty-seven years old, nearly fifty, and just trying to get by. Granted, fifty by Wizard standards came out to somewhere like thirty-five in the Muggle world, but that was cold comfort: young-looking or not, he had still carried the weight of nearly a half century, much of it spent suffering.

Sometimes he didn't know why he stayed in England. He'd have taken Albus away from this mess and the barren ground if he knew there was a better option. Unfortunately the sickness was already in their blood, a constant dormant threat somewhat resembling HIV, and things weren't much better in the Muggle world. Transnational corporations polluted, governments failed to protect their people, and the global count of refugees continued to climb as war and environmental disaster uprooted people by the tens of thousands.

So here he sat on Christmas Eve in the Muggle restaurant that he trudged past every morning at five a.m. on his way to work. He felt uncomfortable sitting still, sipping water and trying to read the detective novel Hermione bought him more than a decade ago for his birthday. It'd already been seven years since she died, and nearly ten since Ron passed on. The old Wizarding families were the first to die – the Mediwizards said their genetics were weaker from generations of intermarriage.

Albus was off with some friends from school (somehow he'd scraped together the funds to send him to Uni), and he didn't like to be in their apartment alone. It made him uncomfortable. He was all alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

Gradually, he noticed someone else in the restaurant. There were a few scattered couples and grandparents with sleepy young children, sure, but this man was the only other person there alone. He was also the only other person not smiling.

As Harry watched, he took off his glasses and massaged himself intently around the eyes. He was clearly suffering from exhaustion but obviously couldn't fall asleep. Perhaps he'd come here to try and calm his jangled nerves. Every now and then an earnest wrinkle formed between his brows. He was reading a newspaper. As if to soothe an approaching headache, he stroked his temples with his fingertips.

With a start, Harry recognized him. Draco Malfoy! His old enemy, his old ally, his old…Draco had always been an ambiguous character.

Harry studied him. Somehow, although he'd never consciously thought about it, he'd assumed that Draco died along with the rest of the Purebloods in the first wave of sickness. He knew that Draco's family didn't have the money to leave the country, much less invest in experimental treatment. And their bloodline was certainly pure; he could still remember the dozens of family portraits filling the old Malfoy Estate, fathers and sons tracing back for four hundred years.

It was amazing. Draco was perhaps the last Pureblood wizard of his generation left alive. A veritable dodo bird, or perhaps a unicorn.

His white-blond hair was still thick, and his papery complexion possessed the pinkish glow of life. He looked well. His suit was a faded gray, and looked like it once belonged to someone else, as it did not fit quite right in the shoulders. He wore an ice-blue sweater and crisp white shirt beneath the suit. Harry peeked at his shoes, and was surprised to find that he recognized them. They were the same shoes Draco wore to his trial so long ago.

And then Draco looked up. He was clearly only intending to have a glance around at the other patrons, but his eyes caught Harry's. Quietly he folded his newspaper and gathered his cup of tea. He crossed the restaurant in a matter of seconds, his stride far more graceful than it'd been as a gangling young man grown faster than his mind could think. He cut an elegant figure, and looked every inch the fallen aristocrat.

"Fuck you," said Draco, standing by the table and looking down at him with acrid malevolence. Harry was nonplussed.

"What?"

The tone and the swearing were both utterly unexpected. Then Draco smiled a brilliant smile that Harry had never seen before and sat down, clearly making himself comfortable.

"I'm only joking; I just had to get that out of my system. What brings you to Muggle London, scarhead?" His voice was friendly, but somehow dangerously soft and mocking at the same time. Harry found that he was pleased to see him, and got the impression that the feeling was mutual.

Harry smiled against his will, filled with nostalgia. No one had called him 'scarhead' in decades. It no longer stung.

"I live nearby."

"Yeah? Oh, have you ordered yet?"

Harry didn't want to admit that he only had enough money for ice water and a single cup of tea (consumed long ago). He opened his mouth. Draco held up his hand, silencing him, and gestured at one of the hovering service girls. Without soliciting Harry's opinion, he ordered a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches. As an afterthought he requested a pair of chocolate croissants as well. When she'd gone he leaned forward and conspiratorially murmured, "The chocolate will do the both of us good – we're looking a little grey and aged for Christmas Eve."

"Me, yes. You? I don't think so. Have you been drinking the fountain of health?"

"Nothing so extravagant," Draco folded his hands on his stomach, "I just happen to have been very fortunate in my genetic make-up."

"Oh?"

"It would seem that I am not, in fact, my father's son," seeing Harry's amazement, he continued, "My mother, who you may remember as a woman of some not inconsiderable will and resources, wanted to punish my father for some offence. So, she went out and acquired a Muggle lover. A few weeks later, I popped into existence and she dumped him. I'm not sure how she did it, but she passed me off as a Malfoy for years. Her secret might never have come out if it weren't for the Sickness. I went to the hospital like everybody, and it turns out that being a Halfblood is the best defense against it."

Harry let this information enter his tired mind slowly and percolate into understanding at a comfortable rate. When he'd fully processed it, he raised his eyebrows. Draco raised them back and saluted him with his cup of tea, taking a sip.

"What…?"

"I know. That was my reaction too. It turns out that my whole life was a lie. But that lie also saved my life, so I've made peace with it."

"But…I mean…what?"

Draco chuckled and then grew serious, "I heard about your…family affairs. I actually came over here to offer my condolences."

Harry felt the heaviness of the past settle over his shoulders again. He'd forgotten it. "…Thank you. It's been a long time, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way."

"Isn't that the truth?" Draco was wry and for a moment the freshness vanished, leaving a tired man. "I haven't been able to get a good night's sleep since my mother and wife passed. I never could stand sleeping alone, and it hasn't gotten any better since they've been gone."

The girl brought their meal and tea in the silence that followed. Harry was heavy with revived grief, but hunger reigned. He devoured a sandwich as politely as he could. When he finished, he offered,

"So what do you do for work these days? I have to admit that I've lost track of you since the trial. I...I thought you were dead, like so many others."

"I run the Treasury. It's just me, a free elf named Bets (one of the few to survive), and the miniscule funds the Ministry manages to collect. Let me tell you, it is difficult work. Trying to decide which part of our infrastructure is most in need when the entire thing is in shambles makes me want to cry. I like to say that my job is splitting hairs and lying to myself."

Harry snorted, amused again. They bantered for several hours, eating and drinking and talking about everything from old pranks they played on each other at Hogwarts to the idiosyncrasies of their co-workers. When the dinner guests began trickling in, they gathered their coats (Harry's a patched tweed from a charity shop with a jumper underneath and Draco's a chic black wool trench) and set out for a nearby pub. They plied one another with drinks and Harry somehow ended up getting invited to spend Christmas with Draco and Bets (along with a few other tiny departments still straggling on) at the Ministry. He mentioned that he might be bringing Albus, and Draco's eyes got moist as he confessed that his wife was pregnant with a boy when the sickness took her.

They said goodnight in the cold miserable drizzle of December, and then there was a small eternity in which a cosmos of confused feelings and memories swirled between them. Their eyes had met, and neither knew how to look away. Harry took a half-step towards his old enemy, and Draco took one towards him.

Warmed inside with cheap lager and chilled outside with sleet, they kissed until the bus arrived and Harry hopped on. He hadn't felt this conflicted since he thought that Voldemort's downfall was only possible with his own death.

O

On Boxing Day someone knocked on Harry's door. He was home, resting his sore back on the sofa and plowing through the final chapter of Hermione's novel. Expecting that Albus had forgotten his keys again, he was utterly unprepared to find Draco standing there.

He shouldered his way inside before Harry could decide whether he should shut the door in his face or not.

"Hey."

Harry looked away, embarrassed at his behavior and his slovenly appearance. He hadn't bathed yet and was still dressed in the gray sweats he'd slept in last night. "Hello."

"Why didn't you come yesterday?" Draco was done with pleasantries apparently.

Harry shrugged. He didn't know what to say because he didn't know the answer. He'd wrestled with himself all night, drowning in buried emotions and long-unaddressed issues of sexual attraction suppressed by sadness and family tragedy.

"Is it because I kissed you? Because you kissed back? Or were you just not feeling well?"

"I'm sorry."

Draco kissed him then, and Harry didn't just let it happen. He made a decision somewhere around when they sank into the sofa wrapped around one another that he not only needed this but wanted it too. They'd both been hurt so often and so badly that they hadn't been given a chance to take a head-clearing breath until now.

Lying on top of Draco with no regard for how badly he was wrinkling Draco's suit or the twinges in his tender back, he threw himself into something he'd been craving his whole life.

Of course, that was when Albus returned.

O

END

Note: If these recent updates have seemed sad, that's because _I'm _sad (in the end it's all about me (she says facetiously)). It doesn't matter what I write about – my mood finds a way in. Sorry. But hey, it's a change, right? I like to think it mixes things up.


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